How do you feel about open-ended SF?

[RX-79G]

I have never read it, but one story I have been taking notes on for awhile bears a resemblance to Gravity's Rainbow, in that interconnected events of interest are not explained and appear partially unexplainable.

I don't want to do the Twilight Zone thing of starting with a what if. The events start in our world, but the world starts changing in subtle but surprising ways that people notice but are unable to completely piece together. The story and action comes from the choices people make in this changing environment, rather than focusing primarily on solving the mysteries that are coming up.

I see the story as very much SF - or even hard SF - focused on the realistic fallout of wholly possible events, just not events that the characters can solve to anyone's satisfaction. I take this shape from the way science has often developed useful systems for dealing with the real world, even when the underlying principle remains hidden (like how we still don't fully understand how salicylic acid cures Planter's worts).

I'm hoping for some general discussion on the concept, but the core question is whether dedictated SF fans will go for reading about the journey to unravel something enigmatic, or whether never making it to the destination will prove too disappointing?

It is the sort of thing where people could love every chapter, but feel so invested in the mystery that failing to resolve it would make the whole book a disappointment.

Thanks for you thoughts.

 

[J-Sun]

Trying to be objective, if you lead the reader to have the expectation that there's a solvable mystery and you don't solve it (or allow them to) I would expect them to be disappointed. If they have the expectation that "the universe is not only stranger than we suppose but stranger than we can suppose" then many will likely be fine with that.

Being subjective, I prefer explicable SF and, especially at novel length, probably wouldn't generally care for something very "open-ended" but wouldn't deny exceptions and that's just me, anyway. Apparently Jack McDevitt wrote his Hutchins novels as an unsolved mystery for quite some time and the books were well-received but I don't know (I only read the first one). I read many of his Benedict novels where things were pretty well solved.

 

[tinkerdan]

Make your characters interesting and make their struggles real and let them grow somehow no matter what the outcome and I think that it could all work out well. You would have to have a strong sense of character to set the pace for the reader. So much so that the reader cares more about what happens to the character than whether we ever understand how salicylic acid cures Planter's worts.

 

[RX-79G]

Make your characters interesting and make their struggles real and let them grow somehow no matter what the outcome and I think that it could all work out well. You would have to have a strong sense of character to set the pace for the reader. So much so that the reader cares more about what happens to the character than whether we ever understand how salicylic acid cures Planter's worts.

I realize that. I was just trying to cite an example of how we live with many small scientific mysteries, and how painful it would be to live with a really large one.

 

[Cory Swanson]

Short stories are about conceits. Novels are about character. Novels have conceits, but are more about the people in them and how they react to things. So I second Tinkerdan's notion.

Also, not every book makes everyone happy.

 

[Steven Sorrels]

In my experience, the best stories are about the journey, not the destination. So my vote is for Yes! Open-ended stories have huge potential, I love them for that.

 

[Phyrebrat]

I'm in the yes crowd. In fact, I would go far enough to say that allowing things room to grow in the reader's mind is a much better experience for us.

This works especially for short stories which are often vignettes that give a sense of place, tone, time and/or nostalgia coupled with a concept.

I thing readers, esp genre readers may be possessed of greater creative minds than the average reader, so I'd say you'll be fine.

pH

 

[HareBrain]

I guess it partly depends on whether the reader is led to believe that a credible solution will be given, and that can depend on a lot of things, including the tone of the book, the genre (open-ended won't work if the book seems to be a whodunnit), etc. The failure to tie up everything worked fine in the film 2001, for example, but annoyed a lot of people in the TV series Lost.

I read an article a few weeks ago that said TV writers were now often following the Lost model of throwing in a load of weird stuff without any prospect of tying it together as a cynical way of generating "water-cooler moments" for series viewers.

 

[RX-79G]

I think my fear was creating something like The Difference Engine. But a strong personal story existing in this world that is resolved would solve the issue. Thanks.

 

[Danny McG]

I spouted my piece about this elsewhere in Chrons.
I buy a fair number of books every year. Sometimes just cos I know the authors other work. If ever I'm happily getting engrossed into a story and then it finishes with large open plotlines then that author goes onto my "don't buy anymore" list.
That's my own personal issue however, no doubt a lot of people could give me very convincing arguments about how wrong and close minded I am with this.
Fairy Nuff, but I still won't put my hand in my pocket again and hand over my dough for what I consider an incomplete story...perhaps I should only pay like seventy per cent the asking price?

 

[Venusian Broon]

Personally @RX-79G I think it's entirely feasible and can lead to extremely interesting reads - in fact my favourite SF reads of the past decade has been the discovery of M. John Harrison's 'Kefahuchi Tract' trilogy (...well, the second one is the weakest one, which I do think is a bit of an author's overindulgence, but has it's moments...) which has at its heart a scientific mystery that does not get explained, but is more how we humans interact with it. Which is very much, I think, what you are describing.

But it does have resolution that closes the plot and character arcs and wonderful writing, so I find it a joy to read. Overall it just connects with me - says something about being a finite human in a vast infinite and mysterious universe.

However it does divide opinion, some people hate it as they struggle with his style and (I think) others can't handle the 'open-endedness' as you are insinuating. Which is fine, some people just like stories of farm boys finding swords and inevitably killing the baddy and becoming king. There's a place for all sorts of flavours of stories - otherwise we'd all become a drab monotonous bunch.

p.s. Gravity's Rainbow is one of my favourite reads of all time.

 

[David M. Kelly]

I'm in the dislike category. Like dannymcq if I read a book and it ends up just beng a run up to "buy the next installment" then I will never read anything else by that author. A novel should be self-contained with complete resolution to my mind. That doesn't mean that everything introduced in the book has to be solved or closed in a circle, but the main story thread should be.

 

[tinkerdan]

I can feel your pain::

I'm in the dislike category. Like dannymcq if I read a book and it ends up just beng a run up to "buy the next installment" then I will never read anything else by that author. A novel should be self-contained with complete resolution to my mind. That doesn't mean that everything introduced in the book has to be solved or closed in a circle, but the main story thread should be.

:: However I think that what you describe is quite different from the original posted question.
I have a feeling it was not addressing the possibility of writing a series of novels, but rather one novel that leaves a major science portion enigmatic from beginning to end.

I'm certain when Pynchon wrote Gravity's Rainbow he was not thinking of a sequel or any sort of continuation.
Although in some way with his writing it could be hard to say if it isn't just an extension of a universe he found himself writing about.

 

[Reaper]

In the original post I believe you are implying that basically unexplained phenomena are just happening and that the stories area result of the reactions and not an exploration of the phenomena at all? I'm also very down with this. So long as they have their own story arc(s) then it's all good. The nagging questions that readers leave with should only leave them questioning the obscurity of the world and not searching for absent sequels...

That said, Lost sucked. I loved the aesthetics, the storytelling of the first season was beyond compare, but when I realised they had no end goal but further mystery, I switched off. Laaaaazy writing imho. Don't do that.

IF you want to explore the phenomena at all and still leave it unresolved, it still requires a competion of some sort of journey. Perhaps that's the characters own personal journey that leaves the anomaly unsolved. Perhaps the characters go on a journey that seeks to understand or resolve the anomaly but right at the end their assumptions (or science's) prove completely faulty and the enigma is left unexplained.

My two cents on it!

 

[Brian G Turner]

My two cents on it!

And welcome to the chrons forums @Reaper!

 

[HareBrain]

That said, Lost sucked. I loved the aesthetics, the storytelling of the first season was beyond compare, but when I realised they had no end goal but further mystery, I switched off. Laaaaazy writing imho. Don't do that.

Can't remember if I mentioned this elsewhere (or was going to and then didn't post), but a few weeks ago I read an article that said the Lost model is becoming more common for TV series. If you take something like The Wire, all you can really talk about (online or round the water cooler) is the quality. What generates buzz is speculating about mystery, the more bizarre the better. And by the time it turns out there's no solution, well, too late, suckers.

 

[Overread]

If you look at a lot of famous films, Blade Runner being a prime example, its very true that leaving a sense of mystery about the story generates buzz. It gives people something to talk about even after the series/film is finished. It gives its own marketing and heck sometimes can even spawn its own long term fanbase.

Anime makes extensive use of this method of story telling; partly as a result of the fact that many anime are made during the lifespan of a manga comic and the anime is often made at the peek popularity period before the manga is finished - so the anime can only go so far. However most manage to achieve what many here want - that of the primary story being completed - or at least the major elements presented within. What's left are strings that are left untied which dangle there like a hook to catch interest.

I do agree that its very unsatisfying when one of two endings happens:
1) The author fails to complete the novel - ergo the main story is left unfinished.

2) The ending is weak - a fine example being "and then, they woke up and it was all a dream" Ergo and ending which has no real connection to the whole of the story that came before and is just there because the author couldn't fathom another way out so ended it all suddenly.


Note that when it comes to a series of books I think that how complete each individual novel "should be" depends on the nature of the series. I'm equally at home with Discworld style where each book is a complete story unto itself with connections to the preceding novels; or ones like Lord of the Rings where its essentially one book broken into 3 parts and where you don't have a total story unto itself in each issue (but major themes are covered in each novel).

I have no problem with one novel leading into another because I appreciate that stories don't fit into 500 pages easily (and not everyone can publish 1000 page novels and I dread to think of a 3000page one!). Furthermore there's nothing worse than a series which basically runs book into book trying to be complete stories in each one, because you will inevitably have the first few chapters of each book wasted as you try to recap the previous story so that hte new parts make sense. This is a rush job for anyone new to the book and feels weak; whilst for those who read it in order its a boring segment that otherwise makes it harder to get into the story.

 

[GCJ]

I think it is workable. Tragedy, for example, is a thought provoking concept that can make a hard sci-fi reader relate to the true difficulties of interplanetary or interstellar travel.

The movie Passengers, for example, is all about the journey and less about the destination. As to what was unravelled in that movie, perhaps it was the human condition and the positions of those under extreme stress.